


the dead hours

by darcylindbergh



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Consequences, F/M, It's Not A Game Anymore, M/M, POV Alternating, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 10:34:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10739943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcylindbergh/pseuds/darcylindbergh
Summary: John and Sherlock are still struggling to find their balance in the wake of discovering Mary’s true past when they are unexpectedly confronted with the sudden reappearance of a once-dead enemy. As the stakes ratchet higher and higher, they find themselves playing a far more dangerous game than they’ve ever played before—one that will force them to question not only the nature of the threat growing around them, but the very foundations of their lives: the truths they’ve ignored, the lies they’ve believed, and perhaps even the reality they’ve been living in.*Did you miss me?





	the dead hours

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Мёртвое время (the dead hours)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10773069) by [Merla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merla/pseuds/Merla)



_“…and then you left the way you came.”_  

*

She has five minutes at the most. Two, if the shot was heard.

The air currents are wicked at this height, whipping over the slick edges of glass and steel and roaring past her like so much adrenalin. It pulls and twists the lines, but her fingers are quick and unquestionably competent as she tightens the straps on the harness and locks the carabiners into place. Forty seconds, thirty-nine, thirty-eight: she double-checks the hold on the auto-block belay, arranges her grip on the ropes, and slings herself onto the edge of the balcony.

She looks out over the city, over the glittering labyrinth of London, out to where it meets with the hazy burgundy-black horizon, and, with ten seconds to spare, Mary Watson dives into the wind.

The line swings wide, away from the façade of the skyscraper and into the night sky before curving back in on the opposite side of the curtain wall, where she can disappear into the recesses of the steel framework. Mary breathes evenly through the exhilaration rising in her chest, focuses on the soar of her stomach and the friction of the ropes on her gloves and the harness digging into her thighs as she stablises herself against the building. 

One more deep breath, and Mary braces herself against the ropes and begins to move, one foot after another, rappelling down the tower. She stays curled in on herself as much as possible and moves as fast as she can, controlling her drop: one story, two stories, ten stories, twenty.

The wind burns on her cheeks and howls in her ears, drowning out the sound of a gunshot, and Sherlock Holmes is dying some two hundred feet above her.

Already the intricate map of possibilities and opportunities and consequences is spreading out before her, knocking down a path of domino reactions into endless outcomes. If he lives, if he dies, if he talks. If Charles Magnussen spills, or slips, or tucks his shiny new secret away for safe-keeping, holding it close so he can choose the most powerful moment to reveal it and the most powerful player to reveal it to. She’ll need to call in some favours; she’ll need to cut off some liabilities. She’ll need to be prepared to move in any one of a dozen directions in order to protect her position, made precarious by a split-second decision and a single shot instead of two.  

At four-hundred and fifty-five feet, Mary engages her braking belay and stops for a moment, suspended.

The wail of an ambulance rides up on the wind. Twelve minutes and however many seconds have passed. Thirty or forty. John Watson will be trying to staunch the bleeding; Charles Magnussen will be silently eying the stains on his carpets. Sherlock Holmes might be already be dead. The thought tugs at the corner of her mouth: satisfaction.

The sprawl of the city below her is a blazing mass of yellow and orange headlights, streetlights, shop lights, bleeding into the atmosphere and blotting out the stars. Millions of people bustle through the streets, going about their lives in ignorant bubbles of apathy and self-interest, unaware of and unconcerned with the intrigues and the machinations going on around them, of the movement of power and the influence of an underground ruling class, unaware of their own positions as no more than pawns on a chessboard—sacrificial lambs, willing to line themselves up for slaughter if the right buttons are pushed and the right cards played.

And with no more than a bullet, just a single, ordinary bullet, and their protector, their vigilante, their _angel_ , is bleeding to death above them all, and they don’t even know that they should care.

Millions of people, all of them in the dark, all of them mean and crude with the ignorance of how so much of their tiny little lives depends on the flux of shadows, on handshakes in dark alleys and lies told across conference tables. Meetings where no one takes minutes; phone numbers no one ever writes down.

A name no one says.

 _You really would have loved the look of surprise on his face_ , Mary thinks, and she tips her head back and laughs. 

**Author's Note:**

> My eternal thanks to [hudders-and-hiddles](http://www.hudders-and-hiddles.tumblr.com), for her unending patience and encouragement, and to [Ariane Devere](http://arianedevere.dreamwidth.org/), for her invaluable transcripts.
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://www.watsonshoneybee.tumblr.com)!


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